Politics is the focus of local author

MIDDLEBURY — Addison County author Terry AmRhein is well known to many avid newspaper readers. His political editorials have appeared in many regional papers such as the Burlington Free Press, the Daily Gazette of Schenectady, the Times Union of Albany, and others.

Not shy about pulling punches or tackling big picture issues from the liberal side of the aisle, AmRhein’s new book, “Democracy on the Edge”, is chock full of thought-provoking chapters, even if you disagree with solutions offered.

Retired Porter Hospital physician Bill Fifield contributed a detailed chapter on the gloom-and-doom of manmade global warming. The chapter lacked the perspective of deep time, such as Earth’s four billion-year spree of natural climate change. There’s geological evidence of ice ages and warming spells beginning as far back as the Precambrian Period—when our ancestors were just so much amino acid glop in the primordial goo.

It would have been more entertaining for AmRhein and Fifield to include someone with a dissenting scientific opinion, a respected skeptic not just a mere denier. I am thinking of either space scientist Fred Singer or former NASA senior climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer.

To quote Spencer: “Believe it or not, very little research has ever been funded to search for natural mechanisms of warming… it has simply been assumed that global warming is manmade...”

According to AmRhein’s publisher, the book is based on verifiable facts, but it’s “also filled with Terry’s flare for personal anecdotes and humorous quips that make the book delightful to read.”

“Democracy on the Edge” will delight liberal, progressive readers. It is published by Mill City Press of Minneapolis, Minn., and is available online and at local bookstores.